[PvE] Elemental @ 90... viability?

I've been playing Elemental for 4 years now, and even though I enjoy the spec I'm sick and tired of playing something this subpar. Hell, for most of Cataclysm Elemental's been quite a bit below average, both on logs/raidbots etc and in sims. I was hoping for it to be better come MoP - but it doesn't look like it. My DPS went down since the patch, and level 90 doesn't seem to be any better: http://simulationcraft.org/505/Raid_T14H.html
One question though - are these sims accurate? The OP in "Beta Class Analysis II" stated that all specs were (almost) within 5% of eachother. How come this isn't reflected in these sims?

Is Elemental going to be balanced with Stormlash in mind, making it more or less a support class?
And yes - I know that sims are single target, stand still - but honestly, that isn't going to make much of a difference, as all specs now more or less have good enough movement to get by.

I don't want to be balanced around Stormlash. I want to be able to compete on meters - that's my motivation, that's what drives me.
Is there any hope left for me in the class, or do the sims speak the truth - sad as it is? Should I just go ahead and roll Warlock - as pure DPS classes usually at least have 1 "top" spec?

I think and hope that we won't be balanced around Stormlash. I think we'll be just fine, even if our DPS is slightly behind (couple of percentages, not too much of course) we still have a load of utility to bring. But in all honesty, I don't get why Blizz adds abilities that function like a Warrior's banner or our Stormlash Totem because they're incredibly hard to balance. I haven't done much raid testing, but in a 5 man for example, they're next to useless, although that's probably not what they're balanced around.

I've been playing Elemental for 4 years now, and even though I enjoy the spec I'm sick and tired of playing something this subpar. Hell, for most of Cataclysm Elemental's been quite a bit below average, both on logs/raidbots etc and in sims. I was hoping for it to be better come MoP - but it doesn't look like it. My DPS went down since the patch, and level 90 doesn't seem to be any better: http://simulationcraft.org/505/Raid_T14H.html
One question though - are these sims accurate? The OP in "Beta Class Analysis II" stated that all specs were (almost) within 5% of eachother. How come this isn't reflected in these sims?

The sims are third party, and each class (and often spec) is maintained and updated by different people, at different speeds. The hope is that each model becomes similarly accurate, and thus cross-comparable, but you always need to take the values with a fairly heavy grain of salt for cross-class comparisons; that's not what the models were designed for, primarily. All through 4.3, for instance, Arcane Mages were topping sims, but were dead last in actual performance. I'm not sure the specific reasons behind that, but it's an example of the kind of deviance there can be between sims and reality.

Is Elemental going to be balanced with Stormlash in mind, making it more or less a support class?

No. Ghostcrawler confirmed over Twitter that the dev team considers Stormlash to be "utility" and don't adjust Shaman DPS to account for it (for good or ill).

And I know that you said each class can cast on the move or DPS on the move but quite honestly no class can do it nearly as well as elemental can, if you get the glyph and a few lucky lava surge procs you can do you complete rotation (at your maximum DPS potential) while on the go. Other classes ofte sacrafice a good amount of DPS to move.

It's great to see the difference between sets of gear on the SAME SPEC, but it absolutely fails at comparing classes. there's World of Logs for that (which is obviously empty atm)

Since we have no real reliable way of comparing DPS right now, we'll have to do with what Blizzard told us: shamans are balanced with the rest.

I'm in no way an awesome ele shaman, I've played ret last two Xpacs, but whenever I run HC's, I never have the feeling I actually know what I'm doing (still learning...), yet I never have the feeling I'm getting destroyed on DPS, so I don't really feel like it's THAT bad. (and even if it is, I've played ret in 4.0.3, can't be much worse then that, lol)

Our AoE is kind of nuts to be honest. In 5 mans we are sick good. I hit 90 last night, entered a 5 man with my guild and utterly destroyed everyone on every trash pack, even though I was 424 equipt and they were all 450+. On bosses I was generally last, but not by a massive amount (Hunter was pretty far ahead of me but meh), nothing 30 item levels wouldn't have made up. I can definitely see any fight with 3 or mobs being incredibly good for us and a large, large chunk of the bosses have that. I'm not worried about my raid performance.

I'm not loving it, i can deal some good damage on single target fights, but add even one other mob and everyone else skyrockets past me.

You might do something wrong. Yes, on 2-3 targets (if we take CL glyph) and beyond 5 elems aren't that well. But we do really fine on single/4-5 targets, that's our niche.
And combined single target + AoE is really great. I did 12k DPS more then 2nd guy in recount on Galleon yday

I want to be able to compete on meters - that's my motivation, that's what drives me.

If all you want is top1 spot on the damage meters, then level up 3-4 differend pure DPS classes (rogue, hunter, mage) and always play the FOTM. That is the only way.
If you want to enjoy the game, then accept the fact that the 2-5. spots on the meter are perfectly fine. There are 18 dps in the raid, someone has to take the lower spots too.

You might do something wrong. Yes, on 2-3 targets (if we take CL glyph) and beyond 5 elems aren't that well. But we do really fine on single/4-5 targets, that's our niche.
And combined single target + AoE is really great. I did 12k DPS more then 2nd guy in recount on Galleon yday

Could you please explain what you do? And what numbers you pull? I manage to do about 70-80 on aoe. But my friends are sitting at wellll over 100.

You mean your level 85 dps went down since the patch? Or your level 90 dps is lower than your level 85 dps? If it's the latter, you're doing something horribly wrong. My dps is considerably higher at 90 with greens than it was at 85 in near-BiS gear. Sure, my cast times are wildly longer and my crit chance is horribly low, but our new cooldowns make us incredibly powerful at least in 5mans. Since the patch, we are balanced around level 90 stats, talents, and abilities. So you can't really compare pre-5.0 level 85 dps to post-5.0 level 85 dps.

And it's really not useful to compare our level 90 2-target dps with level 90 warlock 2-target dps which is completely broken at the moment and definitely will be nerfed quite soon I'd expect. You can probably expect a T11-shadow-priest-style DoT nerf + main nuke buff for locks in the next patch.

You mean your level 85 dps went down since the patch? Or your level 90 dps is lower than your level 85 dps? If it's the latter, you're doing something horribly wrong. My dps is considerably higher at 90 with greens than it was at 85 in near-BiS gear. Sure, my cast times are wildly longer and my crit chance is horribly low, but our new cooldowns make us incredibly powerful at least in 5mans. Since the patch, we are balanced around level 90 stats, talents, and abilities. So you can't really compare pre-5.0 level 85 dps to post-5.0 level 85 dps.

And it's really not useful to compare our level 90 2-target dps with level 90 warlock 2-target dps which is completely broken at the moment and definitely will be nerfed quite soon I'd expect. You can probably expect a T11-shadow-priest-style DoT nerf + main nuke buff for locks in the next patch.

This post was made back in 5.0.4 - my DPS has gone up considerably now, yes.

Our AoE is kind of nuts to be honest. In 5 mans we are sick good. I hit 90 last night, entered a 5 man with my guild and utterly destroyed everyone on every trash pack, even though I was 424 equipt and they were all 450+. On bosses I was generally last, but not by a massive amount (Hunter was pretty far ahead of me but meh), nothing 30 item levels wouldn't have made up. I can definitely see any fight with 3 or mobs being incredibly good for us and a large, large chunk of the bosses have that. I'm not worried about my raid performance.

Our problem will inadvertatly be when fights last inbetween ascendence cooldowns - if we miss one we miss a huge porition of our dps..

Fights that last around 1-4mins my dps will be comparable with pretty much any class.. If it then goes up to 5mins then I drop significantly without the Fire Elemental and Ascendence cooldown useable for the 3rd time. We rely very very heavily on our cooldowns, I'd much prefer our base damage to be increased and the potency of our cooldowns reduced.

Could you please explain what you do? And what numbers you pull? I manage to do about 70-80 on aoe. But my friends are sitting at wellll over 100.

I just follow my rotation which is fine explained in guide either here or on totemspot.
My numbers are really dependable on an encounter: on short (within 1 minute) i can do above 100k, on longer fights I'm able to hold like 60k+. Combined AoE+single target - around 75k.
As I said our aoe is not that good comparing to others (especially fDKs) since we are limited to 5 targets on our CL and EQ isn't really good.

I just follow my rotation which is fine explained in guide either here or on totemspot.
My numbers are really dependable on an encounter: on short (within 1 minute) i can do above 100k, on longer fights I'm able to hold like 60k+. Combined AoE+single target - around 75k.
As I said our aoe is not that good comparing to others (especially fDKs) since we are limited to 5 targets on our CL and EQ isn't really good.

For those of you saying, good dps is impossible with elemental shamans, its really more about gearing, and knowing your class down to a point. in my raid i can pull around 170-180k dps burst, and stay around 60-70k through fight. (lava bursts hitting for 120k and more, around 75k-80k no cds.

The class is definitely better off than it was in cata where we completely depended on our fire elemental and elemental mastery cds for the bulk of our dps. and adding EB into the mix gives us an extra boost.

Our problem will inadvertatly be when fights last inbetween ascendence cooldowns - if we miss one we miss a huge porition of our dps..

Fights that last around 1-4mins my dps will be comparable with pretty much any class.. If it then goes up to 5mins then I drop significantly without the Fire Elemental and Ascendence cooldown useable for the 3rd time. We rely very very heavily on our cooldowns, I'd much prefer our base damage to be increased and the potency of our cooldowns reduced.

3/5 minutes CDs don't bring that much in 5 minutes fight to let anyone say that we are clearly balanced around it. Yes, comparing to that spike damage we do at start I feel pity seeing my DPS drops from 140k+ to like 60-70k. But let's be honest to ourselves: we are insane at the start and no one has the same possibility to burst. Nevertheless our sustained DPS is very-very competitive maybe even a bit overpowered.

Our AoE is kind of nuts to be honest. In 5 mans we are sick good. I hit 90 last night, entered a 5 man with my guild and utterly destroyed everyone on every trash pack, even though I was 424 equipt and they were all 450+. On bosses I was generally last, but not by a massive amount (Hunter was pretty far ahead of me but meh), nothing 30 item levels wouldn't have made up. I can definitely see any fight with 3 or mobs being incredibly good for us and a large, large chunk of the bosses have that. I'm not worried about my raid performance.

Definitely agree on the AoE comment; we've been good with AoE since chain lightning lost its cooldown, but now with ascendance and other subtle changes we're even better (ideally against 3 - 5 mobs). When I've been in instances with lots of AoE encounters since MoP (and especially since lvl 87 gave me Ascendance) I have largely dominated the damage meter.

I am not as pessimistic about single-target, however. Against bosses I do slip on the damage meter, but not by all that much - still doing much better than 'average' - adding Elemental Blast at 90 along with, again, the amazingness that is Ascendance allows us to pack quite a punch.